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Using Blood Test Parameters to Define Biological Age among Older Adults: Association with Morbidity and Mortality Independent of Chronological Age Validated in Two Separate Birth Cohorts

Biomarkers defining biological age are typically laborious or expensive to assess. Instead, in the current study, we identified parameters based on standard laboratory blood tests across metabolic, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and kidney functioning that had been assessed in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE) (n = 384) and Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) (n = 1517). We calculated biological age using those ...

Attitudes Toward Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination in Germany: A Representative Analysis of Data from the Socio-economic Panel for the Year 2021

Adequate immunity to COVID-19 apparently cannot be attained in Germany by voluntary vaccination alone, and therefore the introduction of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is still under consideration. We present findings on the potential acceptance of such a requirement by the German population, and we report on the reasons given for accepting or rejecting it and how these reasons vary according to population ...

Socio-economic and Demographic Factors Influencing the Spatial Spread of COVID-19 in the USA

As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed in the USA, ‘hotspots’ shifted geographically over time to suburban and rural counties showing a high prevalence of the disease. We analyse population-adjusted confirmed case rates based on daily US county-level variations in COVID-19 confirmed case counts during the first several months of the pandemic (1 March 2020 through 23 May 2020) to evaluate the spatial dependence ...

COVID-19 Lockdown Compliance, Financial Stress, and Acceleration in Technology Adoption in Rural Uganda

We examine the medium-term impact of COVID-19 for financial well-being and technology adoption in a low-income country. The analysis is based on regionally representative panel data consisting of 1,975 micro-entrepreneurs from rural Uganda. Using a LASSO approach, we first show that several business characteristics predict longer business shutdown due to COVID-19, including running a service business. ...

Cohort Profile: Genetic data in the German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample (Gene-SOEP)

The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) serves a global research community by providing representative annual longitudinal data of private households in Germany. The sample provides a detailed life course perspective based on a rich collection of information about living conditions, socio-economic status, family relationships, personality, values, preferences, and health. We collected genetic data from ...

Germany’s Low Sars-Cov-2 Seroprevalence Confirms Effective Containment in 2020: Results of the Nationwide RKI-SOEP Study

Pre-vaccine SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence data from Germany are scarce outside hotspots, andsocioeconomic disparities remained largely unexplored. The nationwide RKI-SOEP study with 15,122adult participants investigated seroprevalence and testing in a supplementary wave of the Socio-Economic-Panel conducted predominantly in October-November 2020. Self-collected oral-nasalswabs were PCR-positive in 0.4% ...

Four Essays on the Socio-Economic Causes and Consequences of Individual Health as well as Public Health Crises: Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Potsdam

Buying Control? 'Locus of Control' and the Uptake of Supplementary Health Insurance

This paper analyses the relationship between locus of control (LOC) and the demand for supplementary health insurance. Drawing on longitudinal data from Germany, we find robust evidence that individuals having an internal LOC are more likely to take up supplementary private health insurance (SUPP). The increase in the probability to have a SUPP due to one standard deviation increase in the measure ...

Face Mask Use and Physical Distancing before and after Mandatory Masking: No Evidence on Risk Compensation in Public Waiting Lines

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of mandatory face mask usage triggered a heated debate. A major point of debate is whether community use of masks creates a false sense of security that would diminish physical distancing, counteracting any potential direct benefit from masking. We conducted a randomized field experiment in Berlin, Germany, to investigate how masks affect distancing and ...

Physician Effects in Antibiotic Prescribing: Evidence from Physician Exits

Human antibiotic consumption is considered the main driver of antibiotic resistance. Reducing human antibiotic consumption without compromising health care quality poses one of the most important global health policy challenges. A crucial condition for designing effective policies is to identify who drives antibiotic treatment decisions, physicians or patient demand. We measure the causal effect of ...